Vacation Note #2: Tower Records Going Out Of Business Sale, &c

I’ve been coming to Boston several times a year for work for something like 13 years now. There are several pockets of the greater Boston area that I know really, really well.

One such pocket is the area between exits 27 (Waltham) and 32b (Burlington) on I-95 (or “the 128” when you talk to natives.)

In the 13 years I’ve been coming here it’s been pretty rare for a trip to go by that I didn’t stop in for a quick look around the Tower Records storeI don’t know how long this link will stay up, but the store page is here. near the Burlington Mall. Over the years the amount I spent on these visits dropped dramatically, as the rise of online ordering changed the nature of the visits from “buy all the stuff I just can’t get at home” to “pick up anything that looks interesting enough to eat the cost difference from buying it online”. (And, in fact, it was the Newbury Comics store on the other side of the parking lot that got more of my “I’m willing to pay the opportunity cost to have this CD now” spending, since they tended to have a selection that more closely matched my eclecticism.)

Well, whether my spending patterns mirror those of others, or whether for some other reasons entirelyI believe this is where the RIAA would say “downloading”, although I really think it’s more about Amazon., Tower has effectively gone out of business.

I had heard about this, but when I pulled into the parking lot this afternoon and saw the store plastered with “EVERYTHING MUST GO” and “GOING OUT OF BUSINESS SALE”, I admit I was a bit shocked. Not that I care one way or the other whether Tower stays in business, but just because this was something that had been an unchanging part of my experience of the area.

Anyway, once that shock wore off, I popped in to see what kind of “going out of business sale” deals I could get.

I am pleased to report that among a whole pile of deals I got two things that really stand out as “whatta bargoon!” items: the Criterion Collection DVDs of The Ruling Class and Naked.

I’ll write some more detailed reviews of these later, but they have both been on my list of things I must own, and getting them both new for less than it would have cost me to get either of them used (if I could even find them–Criterion is sometime weird that way) certainly didn’t hurt.

Oh, and I should also note that the new edition of Martin Millar‘s Good Fairies of New York is out. I am pleased to have bought it instantly, and will probably read it (and not for the first time) before sleeping tonight.